Eventually Maybe Forever
by theshypen
Summary: Rose triggers the metacrisis instead of Donna, and the results are a bit different. Forced to leave the love of his life in the worst of ways, the Doctor travels on in the TARDIS with a new companion that looks just like him, but reminds him of Rose... What's more, an impossible girl keeps crossing their path. End of S4 and onwards, with some big changes.
1. Silence In The Library

**EVENTUALLY MAYBE FOREVER**

* * *

_**AN: **Hi! __The main ideas behind this story is that I never got over Rose leaving, would have loved to see more Ten/Metacrisis interaction and also I can't help but admitting that Clara is lovely. And, um, I could have done without River Song :B This is an attempt to bake these things together and still my restless heart(s). I hope you won't realize the plot too early, welp._

_**Disclaimer: **I don't claim to own anything. Nada._

* * *

**Chapter 1 - Silence In The Library (Forest Of The Dead)**

"_So. We weren't just in the neighborhood?"_

"_Yeah. I kind of, sort of… lied a bit. I got a message on the psychic paper."_

"_What, it works like some sort of mail?"_

"_Well. Sometimes a cry for help comes through. Somewhere in space… And time. So what do you think?"_

"_Huh. 'The Library. Come as soon as you can. I need you and you need me.' Sounds more like a date than a cry for help. Who's it from?"_

"_No idea."_

"_Fat lot of good that mail service is!"_

.

The room they had ended up in was large and round. Above them was a glass cupule, letting the last rays of daylight shine down on the books lining the walls. The shadow from the wall crept closer with every minute.

"Doctor," Donna breathed and the Doctor felt her touch his arm. "That shadow… It's gone."

That confirmed it. Shadows were moving, lights seemed to be going out. Oh, they were in so much trouble. Whoever had called them here better show up soon, because the Doctor supposed that this would be where he needed them.

"We need to get back to the TARDIS," he said and swallowed hard.

"Why?" Donna asked, terror growing in her eyes as she stepped backwards away from the flickering light in the corridor.

"Because that shadow hasn't gone. It's moved."

Suddenly, the courtesy node, face 'donated' from the late Mark person, beeped up. "Reminder. The library has been breached. Others are coming."

Their eyes met and the Doctor could see that Donna was terrified. Why had he dragged her into this? Why did he keep taking her to dangerous places? He slapped himself mentally, just as a loud bang made them stagger backwards and forget about the flickering light.

The door was bashed open, the book they had used to seal it with easily breaking apart. As its pages were strewn across the floor, a silhouette walked in. Several others followed the first. The Doctor and Donna stood frozen in the middle of the room, where light still shone down from the sky above, as the first figure walked seemingly calmly up to them. They were all clad in white spacesuits, but the visors of their helmets were darkened, making the Doctor wary. If they were dealing with what he was suspecting, he should really be ready to tug Donna's hand and run for their lives in only moments.

The figure stopped only a meter from the Doctor. They were noticeably shorter than he was. Actually, the Doctor quickly noticed that this figure was the shortest out of all the ones who had swarmed into the room now. He looked down at the dark visor, just as a hand was moved up to the side of it, and cleared the darkness away with the push of a button.

He couldn't help raising his eyebrows at the face that was revealed. Donna very audibly let out a breath of relief beside him. She had obviously feared the same as him. Well, not the same perhaps, but something bad nonetheless.

"Hello there," the woman behind the visor said. Her face was round and her eyes a warm brown. Chocolate. The presence of a few wrinkles and a slight lack of luster in her skin told him that she was probably just past her middle age, but her full lips smiled a wide, red smile at him and made the Doctor feel… Odd.

"Hello," the Doctor replied after the few seconds of assessment, but then sharpened his tone. "Get out. Back to your spaceship, tell your grandkids you came to the library and lived. They won't believe you!"

But the little woman just smiled. "Pop your helmets everyone. We've got breathers!"

With that, all of the intruders took off their helmets and glanced at their surroundings like they owned the place. The Doctor was appalled.

"Who is this?" a man with a bitter face and graying hair said, walking up to the people in the middle of the room. "You said we were the only expedition, I paid for exclusives!"

"Seems I lied then," the woman said, shrugging with an innocent face. "Bound to be others, really."

The man grumbled and called for his assistant about some contracts. But the Doctor had reacted at the exchange of words.

"Hang on. Did you say 'expedition'?"

"My expedition!" the grumpy man said, without a change in tone. "I funded it."

"Oh… You're not… Are you?" Perfect. The last kind of people he needed running around this place at this point. "Tell me you're not archaeologists."

The short woman beside him raised an eyebrow as she reached up to fix her hair into a bun. "Got a problem with archaeologists?"

"I'm a time traveler. I point and laugh at archaeologists."

"Really now?" the woman said, eyes narrowing in a way the Doctor would have called interested unless it hadn't been more likely that she was offended. Suddenly though, she reached out a hand to shake his. "Doctor Oswald, archaeologist," she said, smile never faltering.

"Doctor, you say? Doctor Oswald? Interesting name. I'm a Doctor too, but just 'the' Doctor," the Doctor said in fake hospitality before he grabbed her hand harder and pulled her with him as he started walking towards the door. "As you're leaving, and you're leaving now, you need to set up a quarantine beacon. Code-wall the planet. The whole planet! Nobody comes here, not ever again."

* * *

As if that would work on a bunch of hellbent archaeologists with a planet full of mystery. Minutes later, they were at least working on finding a safe way out rather than investigating what they originally came for. Much to Mr Lux's dismay. It seemed the female doctor had more influence over the group than the funder of the expedition cared for. And for some reason, she had been the first one to see reason and listen to the Doctor's warnings.

Doctor Oswald was rummaging through the contents of her backpack on a table when the Doctor found himself watching her rather than help going through the computer records. A thought struck him, and he walked over to the woman, arms crossed.

She looked up as he approached, her small smile no less cheerful than the previous ones, despite the Doctor's recent story about the Vashta Nerada lurking in the dark.

"Were you the one who called for me?" he asked.

"Called?" Oswald said, slightly confused.

"I got this," he said and pulled up the psychic paper to show her. The message still flashed on it.

He saw her smile grow stale. Another wrinkle appeared between her eyes and she slowly took the psychic paper in her hand. Recognition?

"Did you send it?" he asked again.

"No, I… Strange." She let out a short, quiet laughter as if in disbelief. "I dreamed that I wrote this, the night before we got here. Yeah. At least that part, the 'I need you and you need me' bit. That is so odd."

She looked up at him, the narrowed eyes back. "Who are you?"

The Doctor stared just as intensively back at her now, glasses up on his nose. "That is odd. But not unheard of, I suppose."

"Who are you, really?" she repeated, more seriously.

"The Doctor. I come when people need help… Sometimes," he answered absentmindedly while watching her closely. He suddenly noticed that he had moved up to stand close to her, their faces now mere centimeters apart. Breaking away, he shook his head. "So let's help each other out of this mess then, doctor?"

"Agreed, Doctor," Oswald said, the seriousness erased again from her mature face. Quite the optimistic soul, the Doctor couldn't help thinking, as they got back to work.

.

"_She's just brainwaves now. Pattern won't hold for long."_

"_I don't know what I'm thinking…"_

"_She's a footprint on the beach. And the tide is coming in."_

"_Don't tell the others. They'll only laugh."_

"_That was the most horrible thing I've ever seen…"_

_._

The Doctor made sure everyone was standing in the light they had prepared with torches in the middle of the room, before he got to work at the edge of the shadows with his ever buzzing sonic screwdriver, doctor Oswald's lunchbox sitting on a table beside him. Whatever he was going to use that for. Donna found that the female doctor was watching the male one with a strange smile on her lips. A warm smile.

"Do you know him?" she asked quietly, moving up to stand beside the shorter, older woman. "The Doctor, I mean."

"No, no I don't," doctor Oswald replied, glancing at Donna before looking back at the man crouching intensively on the floor in front of the group.

"You sure you haven't, maybe, met him somewhere before?"

"Why?"

"I just thought, I mean, the way you look at him," Donna said with an evasive laughter.

Doctor Oswald let out a little laughter back, shaking her head. But the thoughtful look that glazed her eyes for a moment didn't escape the red haired woman.

"You travel with him, don't you?" the female doctor suddenly said.

"Hm?"

"The Doctor. You travel with him?"

"Yeah. Been doing it for a while now. Make a pretty great team, the two of us. You know, when he isn't busy… Being him."

Oswald laughed again at that, much more genuine, Donna realized. It sounded much better. Wait a bit. If she didn't know the Doctor…

"How did you know he's traveling?"

The question made Oswald's smile freeze anew. She turned to look into Donna's eyes slowly, and the redhead could tell that this was just as genuine. It just wasn't happiness. It was confusion.

"I… don't really know. I just assumed?"

"You just assumed he was a _traveling_ Doctor?" Donna asked skeptically.

Oswald shook her head and stared off into the distance for a moment, before her eyes fell on the back of the man on the floor. Blue suit, dark red shirt underneath. Dark, unruly mane of hair, thick glasses on his nose. That ever buzzing screwdriver.

He had been in her dream, Oswald realized now. And she had written him that message there. She needed him, and he needed her. In the Library, as soon as he could. It was all so odd, yet Oswald didn't feel afraid when she looked at the back of his head now.

Maybe she was getting old and her mind messy. The archaeologist shook her head again and looked back up at Donna with her distinctive smile.

"Of course he's a traveler. How else would he have gotten here, to the Library?"

.

"_The real world is a lie, and your nightmares are real."_

"_Donna Noble has left the Library. Donna Noble has been saved."_

_._

"Okay, we've got a hot one. Watch your feet!" doctor Oswald hushed as she motioned for the members of her team who were still alive to huddle together in the centre of the room they had escaped into. She has just thrown another chicken leg into the shadows to assert that there were Vashta Nerada there.

"They've got our scent now," the Doctor said seriously and used his screwdriver on the flesh-eating shadow.

Behind him, Oswald held a hand on her friend's shoulder, but her eyes were on the Doctor still. Her mind had spun on, and she wasn't even sure about her own thoughts at this point.

"Doctor," her friend whispered to her. "Who is he?"

"What?" Oswald said.

"You just follow what he says blindly. You just expect us to trust a man we found in the abandoned Library, where we were supposed to have been the only expedition. Why?"

"He's… The Doctor," Oswald replied bluntly.

"That's right," another colleague said. "He hasn't even told us his name. What if he's part of all this?"

"Or worse," Mr Lux shot in, "what if he's working for one of our rivals?"

"Stop it!" Oswald exclaimed all of a sudden, making even the Doctor turn around from the shadows with a raised eyebrow.

Doctor Oswald got up from her colleagues and walked over to the Doctor, just as his sonic screwdriver was starting to make funny, irregular noises. "What's wrong with it?" she asked, just to get her mind off things.

"There's a signal coming from somewhere, interfering with it."

"Well, use the red settings."

"It doesn't have a red setting," the Doctor said and gave her a skeptical glance.

"Then, use the dampers?"

"It doesn't have dampers! What do you even know?"

"Well, mine does," doctor Oswald sighed and pulled out an instrument from a pocket.

A pen-shaped, metallic contraption with a green light at the end and a few buttons and lights on the side. The Doctor got up on his feet, staring at the instrument for a second as if he'd seen something impossible, and then snatched it from her hands. He held his breath as he put the tips of the screwdrivers together… And watched nothing happen.

"It's not mine," he breathed out. Then his face took on a very surprised look. "It's not mine from another timeline!"

"No, I just said it was mine," Oswald said impatiently and snatched hers back from him. "My sonic screwdriver."

"Where did you get that?"

"I built it." She stepped up close to the Doctor, looking up at him, faces mere inches apart. Her brown eyes were like deep wells. The urge for the Doctor to touch her temples and pry inside her mind was almost too strong to resist. But he didn't dive into the minds of people he didn't know. Yet… She had built a sonic screwdriver? 51st century, sure. But a human, an archaeologist at that, making something like this on her own?

"That's impossible," he concluded darkly.

Oswald sighed with clear annoyance. "I didn't pluck it from your future cold dead hands, if that's what you're worried about."

"And I know that because?"

"You just accepted that it wasn't yours!" She sighed. "Listen to me! You've lost your friend, you're angry. I understand! But you need to be less emotional Doctor, right now-"

"I'm not emotional!" the Doctor cried out.

"There are five people in this room, still alive! Focus on that!" the other doctor cried back.

"You're waving a sonic screwdriver in my face, one that's more advanced than mine, and your friends think I am the one who can't be trusted?"

"Oh for heaven's sake!" Mr Lux suddenly roared, getting up from his spot in the middle of the room. "Look at the pair of you! We're all gonna die here, and you're just squabbling on like an old married couple!"

The Doctor took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Of course he was bothered by losing Donna. He knew that saving those still alive was more important right now, but… He always said that he hated goodbyes, yet he wished nothing more right now than the chance to get to see his red haired friend again. If only just to say goodbye.

Doctor Oswald's thoughts went differently. She saw the sorrow in the man's face. She could even feel it herself. Deep in the endless woods that were his eyes, she felt what he felt. And suddenly, she knew what he needed to hear.

"Doctor…" she whispered.

She knew she only had half his attention. But that would change.

"You need to trust me. We need to trust each other. I need you, and you need me."

The Doctor looked up at the familiar words, just as the short woman leaned in close and whispered something in his ear. His eyes widened. His hearts skipped a beat. As she pulled back, she looked at him solemnly.

"Are we good?"

The Doctor just swallowed.

"Doctor. Are we good?"

"Yeah," he breathed, barely audible. "Yeah, we're good."

Oswald breathed deeply. "Good."

.

"_It's just a doctor moon."_

"_It literally meant… SAVED! It saved them to the hard drive."_

"_What is CAL?"_

"_I'll show you."_

"_You weren't protecting a patent. You were protecting her."_

"_Auto-destruct in 10 minutes."_

_._

Oswald ran in and caught Anita's spacesuit as it fell. "Anita!"

"I'm sorry. She's been gone a while now," the Doctor muttered from the console. He was still working to wire himself up as the link to the hard drive. To download and restore all the saved people. Maybe Donna would be there as well. "I told you to go!" he shouted back at the other doctor.

She looked up at him. He was about to sacrifice himself. Fry his body, overload his mind. He did it without hesitation, without uttering any regrets. He was such an odd man. And Oswald knew that she couldn't let him do it.

"Lux can manage without me," doctor Oswald said, almost as a matter-of-factly, and walked slowly up to him from behind. "But you can't."

A sharp pain in his head, and everything went black for the Doctor.

* * *

When he finally blinked his eyes again, he was just met with a horrible message from a robotic voice.

"Auto-destruct in 2 minutes."

Instantly, he flew up, only to discover that he was held down by his arm being handcuffed to the wall. And in front of him, doctor Oswald had perched herself against the other wall, wiring up the contraption he had started work on before she had knocked him out cold.

"Oh, no no! Come on, what are you doing?" the Doctor cried. "That's my job!"

"I'm not allowed to have a career?" Oswald said with one of her soft smiles, without facing him eye to eye.

"This is not a joke. Stop this now, this is going to kill you!"

The dark haired woman didn't reply. She checked the countdown on a screen in between them.

"I'd have a chance, you don't have any!" the Time Lord continued.

"You wouldn't have a chance and neither do I!"

The intensity of her quick response made the Doctor hesitate. He just looked at her, crestfallen. She still didn't look him in the eyes. Why would she do this? Some stupid human sense of pride or courage, to honor her friends?

"I'm timing it for the end of the countdown. There will be a blip in the command flow. Should improve our chances for a clean download."

"Oswald, please… No!"

"Funny thing is…" She let out her little laughter. "I've had a dream about this too. About how I was going to die. I didn't remember it until I saw you here. But I know now. It's what must happen."

"Auto destruct in one minute," the computer intervened.

"And the screwdriver," Oswald continued, as the Doctor's breath grew quicker and more frustrated in his state of helplessness. "I knew how to build it, because I had seen it before. Also in a dream, of course. Or daydream. I'm not really sure. A sonic screwdriver. Should have patented it, really. Could have made me a lot more money than this archeology business."

She was still smiling as she rambled on, but the Doctor saw a lonely tear rolling down her cheek. That was too much for him. The screwdrivers, both him and hers, were lying on the floor in between them. He threw himself at them, reaching as far as he could. But it wasn't enough.

"There's nothing you can do," she said.

"Let me do this!" the Doctor pleaded.

"You can't die here, Doctor," Oswald said, finally meeting his pained gaze. Her eyes were swollen from emerging tears, but determined just as well. "It's okay. I was always coming here. I know it, somehow. Doctor. Funny how we're both doctors. None of us are of the healing type, yet we're both bent on saving the lives of others. You would save anyone. And I'm the one who will save you."

"But Oswald," the Doctor said, swallowing hard. "You know my name."

Her mature, womanly face suddenly grew more wrinkles as she couldn't keep the tears at bay anymore.

"Auto destruct in 10… 9…" the computer announced, dreadfully.

"You whispered my name in my ear."

Oswald turned to look at the screen. Only seconds left. She put the wired contraption on her head, to allow it access to use her mind as a bridge for the download.

"6… 5…"

"There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could!"

"4… 3…"

"I liked dreaming about you, Doctor," Oswald said, face glistening from tears but smiling the widest, most genuine smile yet towards him with her red lips and chocolate eyes. "Run, you clever boy. And remember me."


	2. Journey's End I

**Chapter 2 - Journey's End I**

The TARDIS zoomed through the space. Planets passed it by, 27 of them more specifically. A whole, wide colorful world outside. Inside, four people who knew that their destination was anything other than colorful. The Dalek Crucible, they had heard it being called. The giant space station at the midst of all the stolen planets. The heart of this new Dalek fleet. And they were being pulled straight into it.

As the TARDIS came to a stop on the cold floor inside the Crucible, a voice penetrated its walls, clear as if it had come from one of the people inside it.

"Doctor! You will step forth or die!"

The Doctor stepped closer to the doors. Those doors, they had withstood so much in their history. Been painted with so many blue shades and opened up for so many glimmering eyes. But they wouldn't withstand this.

"We'll have to go out," the Doctor said, trying to not seem despondent. "'Cause if we don't, they'll get in."

"Haven't you said nothing can get through those doors?" Donna asked with a blaming look, standing right behind him.

"Yeah, you've got extrapolator shielding," Jack Harkness added, stepping up behind the redhead.

The Doctor turned around with a sad look. "Last time I fought the Daleks, they were scavengers. And hybrids, and mad. But this is a fully fledged Dalek empire. At the height of its power. Experts at fighting TARDISes, they could do anything." He paused to sigh. "Right now, that wooden door… is just wood."

Rose Tyler didn't hear the conversation. She was still standing on the other side of the console, seemingly spacing out. Her eyes were unfocused, her breath slow. She was hearing something. Or feeling something? It couldn't be explained. Such a strange sensation. She was sure she had heard it before, somewhere. A throbbing, of sorts. Yes, that was what it was. Pulsating, low and rhythmically throughout her whole being. A sound and a feeling all at once.

Four throbs. Pause. Four throbs. Pause. Mesmerizing.

"Right then. All of us together, yeah? Rose?"

The Doctor's voice finally yanked her out of the strange state. She blinked and looked up at him across the console.

He had changed a little. Not much, he hadn't regenerated again at least. But in subtle ways, she could see that he was different. His brown hair - that wonderful, thick, gleaming hair - was much shorter in the neck than he used to keep it, his sideburns were if possible even more prominent and the fringe that used to hang down over the side of his forehead was instead spiked up in a rough style that made him look... different. She couldn't know how much time had passed while she had spent several years in the parallel world, maybe it had been more years for him, maybe mere months. No... It had to be years. It wasn't just his hair that had changed. Gone was the adorable, hyperactive Doctor that had lost his hand in a swordfight on a meteor starship at Christmas. On the other side of the TARDIS controls, a man with serious eyes stood. But she knew he was still the same in the ways that mattered. No matter how big his ears were or if he was ginger or not.

He was the Doctor and he was no longer lost to her behind a dimensional barrier. He had not died when he was shot by a Dalek. He had not changed upon regeneration this time. He was still here, with her, in the TARDIS. As it should be. Whatever was outside these doors now, they couldn't possibly separate them again.

"Surrender, Doctor!" the robotic voice from outside came again. "And face your Dalek masters!"

The Doctor seemed to ignore the horrible voice and shot Rose a reassuring smile, which she weakly returned before he turned back towards the wooden door again.

"It's been good though, hasn't it?" he suddenly said, a strangely crooked smile on his lips. "All of us. All we did."

Donna and Jack smiled softly back at the Doctor, Jack putting his arm around Donna's shoulder reassuringly. Which she didn't really seem to mind. Rose swallowed hard, still not having moved from her spot. Her hand was clutching a random lever on the control board. She shouldn't be nervous now. She had crossed universes to find this one, the _right _one. She had faced aliens and criminals while working with Torchwood in Pete's world, stared down Daleks in the streets of London and had ice in her veins as she searched for the Doctor across dimensions. But now that he was standing here right in front of him, it was as if a dam had broken. Feelings and fears she had not cared about for months were suddenly allowed to envelop her.

Not that she would let the Doctor see. One more adventure, she could endure before breaking. For him.

"You were brilliant," the Doctor said with a wide smile at Donna, who laughed again.

"And you were brilliant," he continued with a nod at Jack, who shook his head and squeezed Donna's shoulder harder. Again, she didn't seem to mind.

"And you. You were brilliant," the Time Lord finally said with his gaze meeting Rose's across the console. His brown, deep eyes actually looked genuinely happy. She smiled warmly back. She would always be able to smile for the Doctor.

And that was it.

He took a deep breath and mumbled a "blimey", before turning around again and walking out from the TARDIS at last. Donna and Jack steeled themselves and followed him. The Doctor's companions.

Rose took a deep breath as well. As Jack slipped out from the opening, Rose finally forced her legs to start walking. The light from the Dalek space station shone in through the doorway.

But just before she reached the door, just before the light would clear up and she would see what lay outside, the feeling returned. The noise. Four throbs. Pause. Four throbs. Pause. Rose stopped in her tracks.

"Rose?" she heard the Doctor call from outside. "You're no safer in there."

A slamming noise made him spin around. The door to the TARDIS had suddenly closed.

"Rose!" the Doctor shouted as he ran back to the TARDIS and tried to yank it open.

"Doctor! What did you do?" Rose called from the inside, trying with everything she got to get out as well. "You're not sending me home again!"

"Wasn't me, I didn't do anything!" the Doctor called. Rose could hear a sting of panic in his voice. That couldn't be good. This wasn't him, not this time.

The Doctor turned to the supreme Dalek with a furious look. The red Dalek stood on a podium before them.

"What did you do?"

"This is not of Dalek origin," was the simple, robotic reply.

The Doctor disregarded it. "Stop it! She's my friend! Now, open the door and let her out."

"The TARDIS is a weapon," the red Dalek continued, seemingly disregarding the Doctor in return. "And it will be destroyed."

The voice was still heard inside the TARDIS. Rose quit her banging on the wooden door when the last bit was spoken. Destroyed?

The next second, she was thrown back. The TARDIS was spinning and rattling about and Rose could hardly even get up on her feet. This was not good. Not good at all. Was the TARDIS falling?

"Doctor!" she called out in vain. The word she was always calling when in deepest distress. The word that had always saved her. Before.

Suddenly, the spinning stopped. Instead, parts of the TARDIS began exploding and catching fire. Rose took shelter from a shower of sparks under the central console table. The powerless TARDIS was getting destroyed. With her in it and no Doctor. She was utterly helpless.

.

The burning power core of the whole Dalek Crucible, that was where the TARDIS had been abruptly deposited. The Doctor, Donna and Jack were watching the blue box sink into the inferno on a holographic screen, a sinking feeling in their stomachs accompanying the image.

The Doctor felt as if he was the one burning up. His hands were shaking. His head was throbbing. His breath became quicker. Rose would die. Not just disappear from his side into another universe, where she could live happily. She was dying. Several times before, in their adventures together, had he feared that he had lost her, but she had always come back. When the lone Dalek had held her hostage, at the game station when she was zapped by a robot, when the Wire had stolen her face, when she was spinning out of control into a black hole because of him... But his mind could not see any way she could escape this. She was trapped in a burning TARDIS, out of his reach.

"Please!" he practically screamed back at the Dalek, but not taking his eyes off the screen in the air. "I'm begging you, I'll do anything!"

The Dalek stayed uncharacteristically silent.

"You can put me in her place! You can do anything to me, I don't care! Just get her out of there!"

Donna gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth. The TARDIS had visibly caught fire. Jack grabbed her and held her tight. The Doctor felt his eyesight go dim. Rose.

.

She clung to the console board. It was getting harder to breathe as there was smoke over her head and the temperature had gone up by a lot very rapidly. The end of Rose Tyler, at the hands of the Daleks. They had gotten her once already, gotten her stuck in a parallel universe. Now they would get her twice. But this time she would be stuck on the other side of the line that separated this life from the next. Or just darkness. She didn't know. All that mattered in her mind right now was that the Doctor wouldn't be there.

She coughed and fell forward onto her knees and hands, hearing herself sobbing through the chaos. And she heard a throbbing.

It didn't come from the TARDIS. It was the same sound she heard before, it gave her the same numb feeling. It was almost as if it came from within _herself_. And somewhere else, somewhere close…

Her reddened eyes wandered until they spotted the see-through cylinder that lay on the floor beside her. It had fallen over when the TARDIS had been tumbling. The Doctor's hand. He had gotten it cut off on his very first day of wearing this face, in his duel with the Sycorax. Rose remembered as if it was yesterday, how he had just jumped back onto his feet and grown a new hand, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. That was years ago.

But the hand was here now, saved by Captain Jack. And it was calling out to her. Could a hand even be calling out?

Something exploded in the console above her. Rose crawled away and found herself sitting right next to the cylinder. Was the hand glowing? The regeneration… The Doctor had put the extra energy into this hand instead of changing his face.

The throbbing noise enveloped her completely. The fire and the cracking of the TARDIS around her subsided. All she could hear, think and be was the throbbing. She reached out and touched the jar.

Instantly, the golden energy flew through the air, into her. Rose screamed as she felt it enter her, alter her, awaken things within her. The world in front of her eyes went from smoke and fire to golden sparks. The hazel eyes turned into shining stars and the regeneration power that still swirled around her in the air, froze for a split second. Then, as if ordered, it all shot towards the hand in the jar and broke the glass in its way.

At that particular sound of glass cracking, Rose Tyler sat up straight and blinked. Her eyes were back to hazel and her head felt oddly light. Still with the sounds around her sort of muffled, she watched the hand, the Doctor's hand, glow on the floor in front of her. When had it gotten out from the jar? It lay broken beside her.

Before she could try to make sense of it, she saw something incredible. The hand started to wiggle, one finger at a time, before closing into a fist. What then happened made Rose jump up, disregarding all the fire and smoke and sparks flying, out of shock.

In a brimming, golden light, the Doctor was suddenly standing in front of her. Bewildered face, wiggling fingers and…

"It's you," Rose stuttered.

"It's me!" the Doctor said, eyes wide open.

"You're… naked."

Moments ago she was afraid of dying but now all she could think about was the fact that she was suddenly seeing the Doctor fully naked. She couldn't even turn her stare away.

The Doctor first looked down and gaped, seeing that she was correct. But the Cloister Bell of the TARDIS quickly brought him back to his usual, less selfaware state.

"Blimey!" he just blurted out before reaching the central console in one leap.

.

The other Doctor fought to contain his anguish as he watched the TARDIS sink below the surface of the burning sea that was the power core. Tears were actually running down his cheeks now, but not a single sob had come from him. Donna couldn't watch the holographic screen any longer. Her eyes were fixed on the Doctor, and her own heart broke from seeing his moist face. She understood well that this was among the most horrible things someone could make the Doctor experience.

"Total TARDIS destruction in ten rels!" a Dalek voice beamed out before counting down emotionlessly.

Donna stumbled forward, pulling Jack with her as she moved up to stand beside the helpless Doctor, each of them taking one of his hands in theirs. As they grasped them, his fingers didn't clench back. Donna's sobbing didn't let her utter a single word and Jack's mouth opened and closed, but there was nothing that could be said to ease this pain. Nevermind the TARDIS. Rose Tyler was gone... For real.

.

Only, Rose Tyler wasn't actually dead. She was putting out fires in the TARDIS while a Doctor only wearing her jacket around his midsection was running around the console, practically hitting it in various spots to try and stabilize it.

"She should be fine, like I've said before, it takes a lot to kill a TARDIS!" the Doctor laughed as his beloved machine finally started to make its usual, hissing sounds again.

Rose put out the last imminent flame with the fire extinguisher that had conveniently been stored below the control panel, and turned to look at the man. They hadn't been talking yet, the Doctor had only realized that something bad was going on and made the TARDIS travel away from it. Not through time, as he didn't want to get lost accidentally, but in space, as he had moved them out to hide somewhere in between the 27 planets in the Medusa Cascade. And also, he had accepted Rose's jacket when she had wordlessly held it out to him.

It wasn't until now, when they stood on opposite sides of the console once more, and the TARDIS was stable and silenced in space outside the Dalek Crucible, that the new Doctor stopped to think.

He was rather naked. And Rose Tyler was here. That was actually awkward, wasn't it? His newly regenerated mind must be a bit slow on the uptake. Yes, this was definitely awkward. He needed to get clothes on. Pronto.

"You've still got a wardrobe, right?" Rose suddenly asked, breaking the silence, as if she had been thinking the same thing.

"Yeah, yes of course!" he said and nodded energetically. "Let me just, um, find something more suitable to put on and I'll be right back, alright?"

Rose nodded weakly and leaned against the console as the Doctor began walking towards the corridors. Noticing her confused state though, he stopped.

"Rose," he said and made her look up. Once again, a bit awkward, he was still only wearing her rather small jacket over his hips. "We'll be alright. All of us. I promise."

Rose nodded again, but still looked rather stunned. It would have to do for now, he thought and set off. He didn't pick his outfit with great care, he just took a blue suit he had worn on many adventures together with Donna lately, and a wine red t-shirt to go with it. And of course, shoes. Dark red chucks, as always together with this suit. Only took a minute to get dressed.

"There we are," he said cheerfully as he reentered the control room, then remembered that they should be quiet to avoid detection, and hushed himself quickly before whispering the rest. "Now, let me just fix the essential wiring that burned up and we'll be on our way to rescue the world. As I suppose is necessary. It usually is."

Rose only nodded this time too. But she gingerly moved closer, and eventually sat down beside him as the Doctor lay down on his back beneath the control board and started pulling at the heap of loose, destroyed wires that hung there.

He didn't ignore her, even if he was busy. His Time Lord brain could do many things at the same time, fixing a broken ship and fixing a broken Rose simultaneously shouldn't be a problem. But for some reason, he wasn't sure how to begin.

Turns out she did that for him.

"Are you the Doctor?" she asked.

Oh, she wasn't even sure on that point. This could be tricky, he thought and frowned.

"Don't I look it?"

"You do, but…"

"Last time I regenerated, you believed that it was me, even though I looked completely different. Remember? Christmas, Sycorax… Hand getting cut off in an alien duel with swords? You tossed me a sword and finally called me the Doctor again!" he chuckled, still rather quietly, to be careful.

She did remember, but she didn't understand.

"But the Doctor walked out from the TARDIS. He was with the Daleks. Is… Is he still there? Are there two of you now?"

"Aren't you a clever girl," the Doctor grinned, accidentally making a wire send sparks in his face. He just swatted them away as if they were flies.

"I've seen many things. Both with you and after…" Her voice faltered, but he knew what she meant. After Canary Wharf. "But you have to explain this. The Doctor said he didn't need to regenerate. He only healed himself and…"

"And sent the remaining energy, which was most of it to be honest, into the hand in the jar. I remember that. That was me, doing that. I _was_ the Doctor. Right up until that."

Rose's eyes narrowed, but then widened again. He glanced at her as he connected a few more wires correctly. She understood now.

"So you basically… Cloned yourself by cutting off a hand and regenerating into it?"

"Didn't mean to. Mostly figured I could use it to heal myself if another nasty situation ever came along. Which, you have to admit, they seem to do around me. But now it seems like it was a pretty handy chain of events. Handy, get it? Ah. The energy wasn't enough to regenerate me immediately from this hand though. Needed a little extra push." He paused and thought hard for a second. "Some Rose-human DNA seems to somehow have done the trick. Funny how things turn out sometimes, don't you think? Now," he crawled out from beneath the console and sat up on the floor next to her.

Their eyes met, truly met, for the first time in ages for this Doctor. He tried to take it all in. Her blonde hair, different from before but as characteristic as ever. Her full lips, distinctive jawline and - most of all - her large, warm eyes. He felt a sting inside and knew that he had really missed them. Missed all of her, really.

"We had only just said hello to each other," he said softly. "We were running in the street, when that Dalek came and it's a blur next, with the regeneration and... So I haven't even properly…" His voice grew thick and his eyes looked down.

"What?" Rose said, but she realized it almost immediately. This Doctor was only just seeing her again after Bad Wolf Bay now. It felt surreal. She had hugged the other Doctor and prepared to face the Daleks together with him. But this Doctor had only just regenerated after having been shot, only seeing her in a daze until now.

He let out a little laugh. "It's just nice to see you again, Rose Tyler."

She smiled, genuinely. "You too, Doctor," she said before leaning in towards him.

He didn't hesitate for a single second before he flung his arms around her and held her hard. Harder than ever before, Rose thought.

Emotions were spinning around inside the new Doctor. He didn't usually feel this wild, not even with Rose. Or had he forgotten how they used to be? His hands stroke her back and he burrowed his face in her neck. It wasn't like hugging Donna. Donna was reassuring and friendly. Rose was... Just Rose. Something undefinable. He was so incredibly happy to see her again. Maybe the human part of his DNA got the best of him, hormones and chemicals swirling in his less Time Lord like bloodstream, or something.

Rose shuddered when he touched her. She had missed his strong hugs more than anything else in the entire universe, or all of her universes for that matter. And there was the comforting sound of his beating hearts, throbbing like they always had… Hang on.

"That's the sound I kept hearing," Rose said, not letting him pull away to look at her. "Your hearts. I heard it even before you appeared! How..."

"Oh, yeah. I'm a, um, complicated event in time and space, I suppose. A Doctor duplicate. Signs must have rippled back through time and converged on you."

"Why me?"

She could even feel his face smile against the skin of her cheek.

"Oh, Rose. Who else?"

* * *

_**AN: **A part-Rose Doctor instead of part-Donna Doctor! I know the metacrisis in canon pretty much talked like Donna did, but I think Rose isn't as briskly colorful as Donna and as such there wouldn't be as immediately obvious effects of being part-her as being part-Donna._


	3. Journey's End II

**Chapter 3 - Journey's End II**

Inside the Vault of Davros in the Crucible, the Daleks had succeeded in bringing the other Doctor and all his fighting companions into one place. Martha's devastating plan had failed, Jack and Sarah Jane's plan had failed as well. The Doctor and Donna were imprisoned by energy fields, and Rose Tyler was believed to have perished along with the TARDIS.

Everything looked grim. The Doctor's tears had dried. He never gave up, but this time there was nothing he could do. The reality bomb was powering up and here he and his friends stood helpless at the epicenter of the destruction of all of reality. His friends. He might as well call himself their enemy, judging from the way he had ruined their lives. He hated that Davros was right. He burned anyone he touched, anyone who dared to travel with him. He lured them in and then spat them out. Left them. Or they left him. And even if they came back, they would be forever changed. He glanced at the crowd of people he held so dear. They were on their knees, Daleks pointing weapons at them.

His fault.

No way to stop it.

He had already killed Rose. Maybe this universe was just better of dying now anyways. He closed his eyes to the sound of Davros horrible laughter.

Another sound made him open them again.

"But that's…" he began, but trailed off. The familiar noise, the distinct breeze.

"Impossible," Davros finished his sentence as they all turned around to face the source.

The TARDIS materialized in an open spot of the Vault, clearly visible to everyone in the room. The door opened, and out stepped the last person the Doctor had expected to see. He had for a moment allowed himself to believe that Rose had managed to control the TARDIS and escape. But it wasn't Rose. It was himself.

"Brilliant," came from Jack behind him.

The new Doctor stepped out and raised a very dangerous and homemade looking gun at Davros.

"You don't mess with the big bad wolf," he said and pulled the trigger. The beam hit Davros' machine and made it lose control and sparkle. The creator of the Daleks screamed in agony.

"No!" the first Doctor screamed and looked at his companions. The Daleks were still aiming at them.

This other Doctor, he had to be a future version of himself. It couldn't be a past one, because he didn't remember doing this... But it couldn't really be a future version either, because the TARDIS had been destroyed already. The Doctor felt confused and suddenly worried. Whoever this other Doctor was, he was reckless. If he fired at Davros, the Daleks would fire at them!

"The Doctor has escaped!" one of the Daleks guarding exclaimed. "Exterminate the prisoners!"

"I said, don't mess with me!" the second Doctor roared and fired the gun again, this time at the Dalek talking. The Dalek was instantly killed in an explosion that sent parts of metal flying over Jackie and Mickey.

Suddenly, an electrical beam came from out of nowhere and hit the second Doctor in his back. He groaned and fell to the ground. Davros had regained control over his vehicle.

"Activate holding cell," he said darkly, and a new energy field appeared around where the new Doctor was lying. He had dropped the gun.

Rose saw it all. Seeing the first Doctor captured but alive and well sent ripples of happiness through her, but when the second one was captured, she took a chance. She had to. The reality bomb was about to fire. She ran out from the TARDIS, giving the first Doctor a shock from seeing that she was still alive, and reached for the gun on the floor, grabbed it…

"Rose!" she could hear one of the Doctors call out, or it could have been both.

But she was hit with Davros' beam as well, and thrown backwards by the force of it. She landed next to a console, her head thankfully only hitting a lever that pulled away on impact, rather than the hard table. Levers… Buttons… Electricity. Her brain hurt. But she wasn't confused anymore. She was seeing everything clearly. Almost too clearly.

.

When the new Doctor had heard from Rose about his twin being captured on the Crucible, he had locked in on the Time Lord's signature and found out where to materialize. Time travel was still too risky to try, so they had to hurry. He had quickly constructed a makeshift weapon that could incinerate a Dalek immediately. Strange that the other Doctor wouldn't have thought of that... Or maybe he had thought of it, but hadn't done it. The man who never wields a gun. Except when facing Daleks.

.

"Destroy the weapon," Rose could hear Davros' voice from the other side of the console she had crawled around, and then the unmistakable sound of a Dalek gun being fired. "I was wrong about your warriors, Doctor. They are pathetic."

That plan was off, then. But the reality bomb was still ticking down. She had to stop it. Because now, she believed she could.

"You are bonkers!" Donna called out, tears still not dried from her face, looking from one captured Doctor to the other. "How come there's two of you?"

"Human biological metacrisis," the newest Doctor said quickly.

"You what?" Donna spat out.

"Never mind that," the older Doctor said with clenched fists. "Now we've got no way of stopping the reality bomb."

Peeking up over the edge of the console she had luckily enough been thrown towards, Rose spotted both Doctors in their holding cells. The one in the brown suit looked more shaken than she had ever seen him before. The one in the blue suit was just looking sad and disappointed. All while a Dalek voice was counting down towards the end of all things. The humans had all clasped each other's hands. Her mother was there, and Mickey! Sarah-Jane, Jack, Donna and a dark girl Rose remembered having been referred to as Martha during the split screen call earlier.

Don't worry, she thought and stood up at last. Don't you worry.

"Stand witness, humans and Doctors," Davros said calmly, oblivious to the fact that Rose had woken up from the assault. "The end of the Universe has come."

"Three, two, one… _Bzzt._"

"Bzzt?" Donna immediately sounded out as she let out a huge breath she had been holding. No explosion. Just the screen that had been showing them the glowing planets, going blank.

"Bzzt," Rose Tyler clarified. All eyes suddenly turned to her, standing at Davros' main console with a casual look on her face. "Oh sorry! I just closed all Z-neutrino relay loops using an internalized, synchronized backfeed reversal loop – that button right here," she added with a wink towards the Doctor dressed in blue.

The brown Doctor stood amazed. "You learned that at Torchwood?" he asked in disbelief.

"Not exactly," Rose said, pretending to be thinking.

"You will suffer for this!" Davros growled and pointed his finger at her to fry her with electricity once more. Rose would have none of it though, and quickly pulled a few other levers.

Davros' attack backfired and electrocuted himself instead. The blue Doctor was now laughing while the brown Doctor and the humans still stood in perplex amazement at Rose's sudden skills with alien technology.

"Exterminate her!" Davros shouted angrily, sending multiple Daleks towards her.

The Vault's control console could hinder that too. With a few clicks and the twist of a knob, Rose made her enemies spin on the spot instead of firing their weapons. The Daleks were completely under her control now. She could do anything. Because she was smarter than ever before.

"How did you work that out?" the first Doctor asked, still not seemingly able to believe that it was actually Rose standing there, taking down the Daleks with tricks only he could have come up with. If he, even.

"Time Lord," the other Doctor said with a mischievous smile at the first one, who raised his eyebrows. "Part Time Lord."

"Part human," Rose clarified with a blinding smile, now looking at the first Doctor. "That became a two-way biological metacrisis. Half Doctor, half Rose. Now, if this is not a big bad wolf to be afraid of, I don't know what is."

The blue Doctor was grinning with pride, and the brown one finally seemed to believe his eyes.

"Rose!" he breathed.

"Holding cells inactivated, Vault sealed. Come on, Doctors. A little help?"

The light around the prisoners dissipated, to Davros' chagrin, and since most of the Daleks were still spinning helplessly around with no way to aim properly, the Doctors could run up to Rose at the console unhindered.

Both reached the girl and slammed their arms around her at the same time, resulting in some sort of sandwich hug from which Rose quickly fought her way out.

"More important things to do now, Doctors," she said, but still squeezed both of their waists briefly before pressing a series of buttons rapidly. "Reversed the Dalek weapon function. They won't be able to fire without hurting themselves now."

The blue Doctor was still smiling happily, but the brown Doctor suddenly furrowed his brow. As Rose hammered away at the alien controls, he could see her happiness. She had gained a Time Lord mind. She finally knew the things he had annoyed her with knowing those years ago. She must be feeling like a goddess right now.

"I can think of ideas you two wouldn't dream of in a million years!"

"Don't assume too much now, with a bit of luck I gained some human mind as well!" the blue Doctor countered.

Rose laughed. "The universe has been waiting for me."

"Always," the Doctor replied, and the two smiled at each other for a pausing moment. The brown Doctor glared at them both, feeling a nagging sense of suspicion brewing inside of him. But it would have to wait.

"We've got twenty seven planets to send home," he said. "Activating the Magnatron."

Davros tried to stop them, but quickly found himself with a gun staring into his face. Mickey and Jack had fetched proper guns from the TARDIS that could at least hurt a Dalek badly.

The three more or less Time Lords pulled the last levers. The stolen planets were returned home, one after another, just the way they came.

Suddenly, Rose was spun away from the console and pulled into a strong hug from someone who's arms and scent she would recognize even if she had gone blind and deaf. Jackie cried into her daughter's hair and didn't seem to ever want to let her go. Rose laughed and embraced her back lovingly.

"Is anybody going to tell us what's really going on here?" Martha asked.

All three Doctors looked up and Rose sighed, peeling her mother's arms off her body.

"_He_ poured most of his regeneration energy into his spare hand," she began, pointing at the brown Doctor. "I touched the hand and the energy flew into me, but for some reason it reversed and made a _new_ Doctor grow from the hand," she continued, pointing at the blue Doctor. "But the Time Lord energy stayed dormant inside my head until my synapses got that little extra spark. Thank you, Davros!"

"So…" Mickey said, not a little bit confused.

"So now my body is human, but my mind is Time Lord. Or, enough Time Lord at least."

"You aren't the same Rose anymore?" Her mother was turning devastated.

"Of course I am! And yet… not."

"So there's three of you!" Sarah Jane exclaimed.

"I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now," Jack shot in.

"Three Doctors," Donna said, shaking her head. "And I thought it was annoying with one!"

A familiar Dalek voice came from behind them, all of a sudden. "The Vault shall be purged!"

It was the red, supreme Dalek. He came flying down into the Vault, apparently still in control of his armor and movement. Davros' console must only control the lesser Daleks, then. The supreme Dalek fired at the brown Doctor, but this time the Doctor managed to jump aside in time and not get hit. Instead, the shot hit the console where the Doctor had been working.

Jack stepped up and ended the red Dalek's life with his gun before it could do any more harm. But the harm was already done. "Awh," the brown Doctor groaned. "We lost the Magnatron, and there was only one planet left." He checked the screens. "And guess which one... But we can use the TARDIS!" he realized before running inside the blue box to set things up.

The blue Doctor and Rose shared a glance and smiled when they both figured out the plan. All three of them had similar brains now, after all. They proceeded to make the necessary preparations on the Crucible to protect the Earth from the rough ride it was about to get. The rest of the companions huddled together, not sure what to expect next. They had all almost forgotten about the whimpering Davros and the mad prophet Caan.

"The prophecy must complete..." the broken Dalek said all of a sudden, earning a look from the blue Doctor.

"Don't listen to him!" Davros grunted.

"I have seen the end of everything Dalek, and you must make it happen, Doctor..."

He was right. The new Doctor knew that the mad Dalek was right. And he _was_ angry with all the Daleks. For all they had ever done to him, his people… And to Rose Tyler. But the Doctor abhorred violence. He wouldn't commit genocide. But was he really the same Doctor as before? Something inside him made him less hesitant. Less analytical. That little gut feeling. That human instinct. The blue Doctor _did_ have that. That was his human part. _He_ had to be the one to do this, because he could never let Rose live with the guilt, and his other self would never do it at all.

"Doctor?" Rose asked, seeing him lost in deep thought instead of working.

"He's right. Because with or without the reality bomb, this Dalek empire is big enough to slaughter the cosmos."

A cold wave came over Rose at that steeled reply. He wanted to kill every Dalek. She could understand him but… Everything the Doctor had ever taught her had eventually meant that violence wasn't the answer.

"Let's just… Let's wait for the Doctor?" she blurted out.

She earned a strange stare back from him. Slightly hurt, slightly mad. But very determined.

"I _am_ the Doctor," he said, and pulled his final levers.

Within moments, every Dalek on the floor literally exploded. The Crucible rumbled as every Dalek armor in the vicinity of the planets collapsed and killed the creatures inside.

"What have you done?" the brown Doctor shouted, running back out from the TARDIS.

The blue Doctor looked at him with unrelenting eyes. "Fulfilled the prophecy."

They all got into the TARDIS before the Crucible collapsed around them, the brown Doctor being the last one in. He glanced back and met Davros' face among the erupting flames. All Daleks would be killed. By a Doctor. It was all so wrong.

"Davros! Come into the TARDIS! I promise I can save you!"

"Never forget, Doctor," Davros roared, not moving closer. "You did this! I name you, forever, the destroyer of the worlds!"

His final screams were doused by the raging fire. The Doctor remained in the Vault, feeling numbed. He watched his enemy go out in pain, until somebody yanked his arm. Donna's worried eyes looked up at his and somehow made him able to move again. She pulled him back inside the TARDIS just in time.

As the Crucible fell apart around them, the TARDIS zoomed out from its center and found the last stolen planet. Earth. It was time to put emotions aside for now, and give the dear, old planet a ride it had never before experienced.

* * *

**_AN: _**_I'm changing a rather major thing here and ask that you can oversee/ignore that fact :x In canon, Donna was told she was the most important woman in the whole of creation. Well, um, here it's going to be Rose who takes on that specific role instead. I really love Donna and don't want to belittle her, but this plot works much better if we somehow disregard all that foreshadowing and just see Donna as an awesome mate for the Doctor. That's important enough, wouldn't you say?_


	4. Journey's End III

**Chapter 4 - Journey's End III**

Earth was back. One after one, the companions of the Doctor were dropped off by the TARDIS where they belonged. In the right place, at the right time. Mickey Smith even decided to stay in his original world, rather than going back to Pete's world. As the Doctor watched him happily run after Martha and Jack, he couldn't help but smile. This was right. As it should be.

The TARDIS materialized in the street outside the Noble residence. Almost before it had become properly solid, the doors flung open and Donna stormed out. She wasted no time in getting inside her house and finding her mother and grandfather. The Doctor, his duplicate and Rose waited in the street, all knowing what relief Donna must feel when they heard the happy cheers from inside the house.

After a minute or so, Donna Noble came back out, happy tears lining her eyes before she briskly brushed them away. "Doctors," she said, having apparently decided to not differ between them for now. "I'll be staying here for a while."

"What? Really?" the Doctor in the blue suit said with appalled voice. "But we just saved the world! You've gotta come with us and see everything again, because it'll all shine even more brightly now that-"

"Oi! For a while!" Donna interrupted him loudly. "Won't you even let me finish?" she shook her head and exchanged an amused smile with Rose before turning to the Doctor in brown. His expression was more serious still, only bearing a faint smile.

"I feel like… I should be with them. For a while. But then I'll come back and travel with you again, okay?"

The Doctor nodded slowly. "You're absolutely right," he said.

"I mean, maybe a week. Month, tops. No, I'd go crazy spending a month here knowing that you're flying about. A week, let's say a week, okay? Maybe two."

Now the brown Doctor finally chuckled as he moved to pull Donna in for a warm hug. Maybe she would turn out to be the one companion he had not broken. If she still had sanity enough to keep one foot on Earth through all this, then maybe. She held his hope in her hands.

Donna hugged the other Doctor at least as warmly before doing the same with Rose. The hug between the two women lasted even longer, though. Donna felt like Rose was the one who didn't want to let go. Finally, she pulled out from the embrace and looked the blonde girl in the eyes. She was the same, yet she had changed. Part Time Lord. Out of the things you could come in contact with when you traveled with the Doctor, this might take the prize, Donna thought. There was no one like Rose. Not to the Doctor.

"Keep the spaceboys in line for me, will you?" she said.

"Yes," Rose just said with a strangely sad smile before the three of them went back into the TARDIS and let Donna listen to its humming as it disappeared.

"We need to make one last trip, I suppose," the blue Doctor said and started punching in coordinates on the console.

Rose looked around. There was only her, the Doctors and her mother left. That could only mean one thing. Her heart sank.

"Don't you dare," she said in sharp tone. "By now you should have realized you can't leave me behind. I'll always come back for you."

"And what? Should we strand your mother here in this dimension when her husband and baby are in Pete's world?" the blue Doctor asked, sounding as if Rose had just said something ridiculous.

Her face was first skeptical, then surprised. Then she smiled and gasped.

"You'll… You'll let me stay? With you? In the TARDIS?"

"Rose Tyler," the blue Doctor said with a condescending nod. "Did you think I'd ever let you go again?"

She didn't even glance at the other Doctor before she stormed into the arms of the blue one and they both laughed as they hugged hard, slamming into the console on accident. Behind them, Jackie stood and watched with a sad smile next to the Doctor clad in brown. He didn't smile at all.

Suddenly, Rose broke the hug and put a hand to her head as if in pain.

"What?" the blue Doctor asked, supporting her tenderly.

"Nothing, I'm just a bit tired," Rose said and laughed the matter away.

She straightened up and walked over to her mother, shooting a smile at the Doctor standing beside her with his hands in his pockets and the glasses on his nose. He only returned it weakly, which made her bright face falter. But no words. The Doctor swallowed hard. He began to feel nauseous, because his mind was beginning to accept that there was no way out of this. She was showing the signs he had hoped wouldn't be there. The other Doctor didn't realize it yet.

.

When Jackie stepped out from the TARDIS next, she immediately burst out into a fit about where they were. Bloody Norway.

"Bad Wolf Bay," one of the Doctors said, stepping out onto the moist sand after her. His suit was blue and his face not too happy. "I know I was the one driving, but I still don't like it."

"Couldn't we have gotten out somewhere closer to London for once?" Jackie asked, annoyed.

"The crack comes out here. We're lucky we can still get to the parallel world at all," Rose said wisely, walking up to them on the beach, side by side with the other Doctor. "See, I really get that stuff now!"

The Doctor's brown suit fluttered in the wind as he slowed his steps and watched the flowing, blond hair in front of him. She had found her way back to him against all odds…

"The walls of the world are closing again," he said, clearing his throat. "Now that the reality bomb never happened. Dimensional retroclosure."

"But that'll mean…" Jackie began in protest.

"That I won't be able to see you again," Rose finished for her. They locked eyes, and for a moment the Doctor thought the older Tyler was going to yell at him. But instead, she just embraced her daughter quietly, stroking her head gently.

"I know this is what you want, love," the mother said.

The blue Doctor intruded on them by suddenly hugging Jackie from behind. She spun around with a chuckle and embraced them both closely.

That was when the brown Doctor first saw it. The three of them, there was something about them. Something… Tyler. The thought made him both smile and feel his heart sink, at the same time.

"So, where will you go now?" Jackie finally said, pushing the others away jokingly, though her voice was cracking slightly.

"Actually, I was thinking of this planet called Felspoon," Rose mused. "Awful name for a planet, but apparently it's got mountains that sway in the breeze. Moving mountains, can you imagine, mum?"

"Well, I can!" the blue Doctor said with a laughter. "I've been there."

"Of course you have. That's how I know about it! Whole universe, packed into my brain."

The brown Doctor narrowed his eyes and swallowed. "And how does that feel, Rose?"

She glanced at him with an odd look for a brief second before she shone up and answered. "Brilliant! Fantastic! I know so much know. Everything that was in your great mind, is now in mine. Actually, did you know that you could fix that chameleon circuit you used to go on about, if you just tried hotbinding the fragment links and superseding the binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary-"

"Rose!" the blue Doctor cried out and steadied her as she gasped and winced.

"What's wrong?" Jackie asked in worry.

"I'm fine!" Rose yelled, a little too loud, and pushed the part human away.

The brown Doctor clenched his fists. It couldn't be helped now. It was inevitable. Rose was clearly in pain, and she knew why. She knew, but she couldn't admit it. She wanted so badly to seem fine towards her mother and the clueless duplicate Doctor.

"Nevermind Felspoon!" she babbled on, straightening up. "Let's just travel in time instead! You know who I'd like to meet? Charlie Chaplin! Shall we do that? Shall we go and see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin! Charlie Chester? Charlie Brown-"

Jackie gasped and put her hand to her mouth. The blue Doctor's face fell. Now he finally understood. Rose was not well.

"No, no, no, wait, wait, wait," Rose went on, backing away from them but not able to stop herself from babbling in panic. "He's fiction, friction, fixing, mixing, Rickston, Brixton-"

She suddenly tripped and fell backwards, splashing away a puddle on the beach with her back.

"What's happening to her?" Jackie cried.

"R-rose…" the duplicate Doctor stuttered and moved carefully closer.

The other Doctor stood still. What he was feeling right now was enough to drench a star system in abstract tears.

"Oh my god…" Rose breathed, not getting up from the wet ground. Her hands shot to her head and clasped it.

"Do you know what's happening?" the brown Doctor asked quietly, yet everybody heard him over the slight wind and sounds from the sea.

Rose closed her eyes and finally dropped the charade. Her face gave in to the sadness and horror she hadn't been willing to acknowledge. But she knew. She knew all too well what was happening to her.

"The metacrisis?" the half Time Lord asked, eyes not leaving Rose's heartwrenching face.

"There's never been a human Time Lord metacrisis before," the Doctor said. "And you know why?"

"Because… Because there can't be," the duplicate answered.

"No…" Rose pleaded on the ground. Jackie, silently sobbing, sat down without caring about the dirty beach and raised her daughter's head to rest in her lap.

The duplicate sat down beside Rose and took her hand. His eyes were swollen. In Roses, there was already tears.

"Because while a Time Lord can easily take a human mind into his own, a human mind can't hold a Time Lord's," he finished.

"I'm sorry, Rose. I'm so, very sorry," the brown Doctor said. He couldn't go closer. He couldn't bring himself to sit down on her other side. There was one Doctor there already. That Doctor should know what they had to do just as well as he did now.

"What do they mean? What's gonna happen?" Jackie sobbed.

"I'll erase her memory," the duplicate Time Lord said blankly. "If she doesn't know about me… About the Doctor or the TARDIS, and if she doesn't remember that she is from another world or anything we ever did together, then-"

"Don't you dare!" Rose roared.

The standing Doctor winced. Rose wasn't looking at his duplicate or her mother, she was staring right up at him now. He should have expected her to protest. It wouldn't change anything.

"I will not forget about you!"

"You will die if you don't. The stress is too much for your human brain."

"I'd rather die than forget about you."

A moment of silence fell on Bad Wolf Bay. The Doctor swallowed hard again and closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, they were full of sorrow.

"Rose. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. And that is why I could never let you die for me." He spoke slowly and solemnly. He saw on her face, through her tears, that she was in immense pain by now. She had even shorter time left than he had thought. She must have masked her pain through all the stops the TARDIS had made to drop the other companions off. But he wouldn't let someone else sacrifice themselves for him again. A brief memory of red lips and brown hair fluttered through his mind.

Rose looked like this was the worst day in her life… Again. On the same beach. Oh, how she hated this beach. The Doctor hated it too. After this, he would never come here again. Well, of course he wouldn't, because this beach was unique to Pete's world and the crack between their dimensions would seal itself any minute now. Rose would be alive. She would finally be able to live a proper life, without longing or looking for him. She could finally be another companion he hadn't destroyed.

He suddenly noticed that his duplicate was looking up at him. The face was unhappy beyond comparison. Being partly human made him more emotional. Being partly Rose… The Doctor nodded. The duplicate nodded back. He knew. They all knew now. It was time.

The blue Doctor put his hands on Rose's head, prying away her own hands despite her cries and pleas to leave her. Jackie didn't dare to intervene, despite shaking from fear at this point. She had seen enough today to trust the Doctor, even when it was about her only daughter. The duplicate Doctor's fingers touched Rose's temples and their eyes met.

The Time Lord Doctor couldn't look. He should. She meant so much to him, and now she would forget everything they had done, everything they had ever said to each other. He didn't like goodbyes anyways. But it really hurt, still. She was, after all… The most…

"Mum," Rose's weak voice came from under the duplicate Doctor's hands.

"Rose?"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be, love! Everything is gonna be alright now!"

"No… It won't. But you will be alright. You've got dad and Tony."

What? The Doctor opened his eyes at that. He saw the intense look between Jackie and his duplicate as one of the man's hands was suddenly placed against her temple instead of her daughter's. Jackie gasped and started crying harder than before.

"Mum. It's what I want."

"I know. Oh, my Rose, I know. Oh my god, I love-" Jackie's words were broken up by her own hard sobs.

The air suddenly felt thick. As if the breeze had stopped blowing and all echoes faded away.

"What are you doing?" the brown Doctor asked them, feeling his heartbeats rise.

"I love you."

The last words she ever spoke floated towards him as through a haze. He didn't even register who they were meant for. Her head fell to the side in her mother's lap as the man beside them drew for breath and fell down into the sand as well.

Her lifeless figure looked as if it could have been asleep, but she would never wake up again. He could feel it, as if the brightest star in his inner universe had suddenly gone out. Unbelievable. Impossible.

He hardly heard the TARDIS humming fervently behind him. He just stood there in disbelief until Jackie's high pitched voice somehow reached through the daze.

"Go! You have to go! Your box is breaking!"

"Rose…" the Doctor mumbled.

"It's what she wanted!" Jackie practically screamed. Her tears were still running and she was holding her dead daughters head in her arms protectively. "Take your other Doctor and go! Get out of here and..." Again, sobbing broke up her sentences. "Never come back!"

His eyes shifted unwillingly to the writhing man in the sand. The blue Doctor struggled to get up. He groaned and staggered.

Rose looked like an angel. Peaceful, hair spread out in her devastated mother's arms. The vision etched into his synapses and he knew that he would never forget this moment. This beach. This was the worst day of his life. All his lives.

The cloister bell from the TARDIS reached him. Imminent, dreadful danger. He had to go. No matter what circumstances, he couldn't let the TARDIS stay in this parallel world. They had to go.

Still in shock, the Doctor pulled his duplicate up from the ground and dragged him with him through the doors of the TARDIS just in time. He didn't even manage to look back at the Tylers one last time. The doors closed and the cloister bell rang in his ears.

The blue Doctor lay on the grated floor, panting, while the brown Doctor rushed to the controls, setting coordinates for nowhere and anywhere, just making sure that the TARDIS flew away from the danger. To the right side of the crack. The right universe.

When they were in flight, silence finally fell as the bell stopped its ringing. The Doctor stood still, bent over the central console, just breathing and trying to grasp the impossible, the worst thought he had ever thought.

Rose Tyler was dead.

* * *

**_AN: _**_Almost c__rying rn myself, gosh. Please let me know if I did this moment justice or if it's pukeworthy. Before you write me some hatemail though, just remember that Rose is my favorite companion. I wouldn't let her "just die" without some decent legacy. _


	5. Empty And Frozen

_**AN: **Thank you so much for the reviews I've actually gotten! Clara will be a thing, but it might take a while. Ten is not going to go. I mean, why would he 8) Not for quite some time, at least._

* * *

**Chapter 5 - Empty And Frozen**

A thousand feelings were exploding at once within him. Memories swirled around and he wasn't sure of what he was seeing with his eyes and what was only in his mind.

Hands grabbed him by the collar and yanked him up from the floor. Strong, yet thin arms. He blinked and found his own face staring back at him. Never before had he seen himself so angry. There were no tears in that face, only a deep, unhindered, flaming rage. And it seemed to be directed towards him.

"You let her die!"

The words hit him like a punch in the guts. Who?

"Why! Why would you let her die?"

He gasped when a particular memory surfaced and mixed with the signals from his eyes. A motionless body resting on the wet sand, blond hair spread and face forever quiet. An angel.

Rose.

"Doctor…" he managed to splutter, trying to shake the image out of his head and focusing on the raging face in front of him, the face that was as good as identical to his own.

But the Doctor tossed him down on the floor again and strode back to the console. The duplicate could hear the Time Lord working the TARDIS, putting in coordinates and making her travel to some destination. The familiar cringe when she moved and finally landed made him grab the fence for support. He got himself up into a standing position just in time to see a brown blur fly past him. The doors of the TARDIS slammed open and he was alone.

A cold light glittered through the opening, and a chill breeze reached him from the outside. Where had they landed?

Slowly and not a little bit unsteady still, he followed the Doctor out. Snow covered the ground and a silent night sky loomed above, several moons sailing there. He knew where they were now, of course. Only one place made him feel like this.

Footsteps, too far apart for coming from a calmly walking man, led from the TARDIS up on a small, rocky hill. He followed them, not daring to form proper thoughts or try to make sense of the whirlwind that was his mind just yet.

From the top of the hill, he could see the waves of the legendary ocean stretch out endlessly under the light of the moons. Tall, silent, forever frozen after the cataclysmic events eons ago. Woman Wept, one of the most fascinating planets in the universe. He had taken Rose here in his ninth incarnation.

Rose.

A scream suddenly tore through the natural silence of the planet. Looking down, he saw a brown figure standing on his knees at the foot of the hill, on what used to be a beach but was now frozen ice with a shallow layer of snow on top. The Doctor was drenched in sorrow, it didn't take another Time Lord mind to see that.

The whirlwind of images, feelings and memories came back and made him clutch his head. Not in pain, but in confusion. He saw Rose walking through the snow beneath a large, curled wave on this planet, years ago. But he also saw himself smiling back, walking only meters away and wearing his previous face. He saw Rose laughing and eating chips on a street in London. But he also saw his own face giggling back as he dropped chips on his shirt. He saw Martha's sad eyes worry about him. But he also saw Jackie's proud eyes as he held baby Tony in his arms.

Wait, what?

His knees were cold. At some point, he had fallen down to sit in the snow. He leaned back against a cliff, just out of sight from the Doctor on the beach, and just stared up into the starry sky for a moment. Breathing.

Rose Tyler was dead. He had feared it many times before, but she had always reappeared somehow. She had always come back to him. This time, her dead body had been under his hands. He had felt her last thoughts. That smile would never smile at him again. And how could he have left Jackie there? Alone, on a beach in Norway with her dead daughter in her arms. And the Doctor, he was devastated beyond measure.

For some reason, he felt much more sorry for the Doctor and Jackie Tyler than he did for himself. His shoulders were shaking as he started to sob. Soon, he was crying harder than the Time Lord Doctor had probably ever done in all of his centuries. Being part Rose might have been a reason. The snow didn't even feel cold anymore, as he pulled off his blue jacket and curled it into a ball in his arms, just to have something to hold.

* * *

The Doctor had no idea of how long he had stood on the beach. It could have been hours, or only minutes. The faint sun would come up above the waves on the horizon soon. A few tears had escaped him after the violent scream, but he mostly just felt empty. Too empty to cry. Still, he brushed his nose and the corner of his eye with a sleeve before he turned around and retraced his footprints up the hill.

He didn't have a plan. He would have to cope with this, as he always had to learn to cope with everything that happened to him. Empty or not.

First things first. He had another self in the TARDIS. As the blue box came into vision, down on the other side of the little hill, a noise reached him. His other self was sitting behind a cliff, hugging his jacket tight, his bare arms pale from the cold. The face was red and wet, as if he had been crying his hearts out for too long. Small sobs still escaped him.

The Doctor found himself pitying the man. He didn't want to – this was the person who had committed genocide on the Daleks and let their friend die, all within a few hours. But seeing him… Seeing himself like this actually hurt.

Suddenly, the duplicate noticed him and got a startled look. Not without some trouble, he got up on his feet, putting the wrinkled jacket back on with hands that had grown stiff from the cold. The Doctor just kept staring, blankly.

"Are you going to leave me here?"

The question took the Doctor by surprise, and maybe it showed, because his other self let out a badly disguised breath of relief almost instantly.

"No," the Doctor replied.

That was all he could give right now. He turned away and returned to the TARDIS without another word. The part human Doctor followed him tentatively and closed the doors behind him with one last glance at the light of dawn at the horizon before the blue box left Woman Wept with only a humming echo and a trace of footprints to tell the tale.


	6. The Red Planets I

_**AN:** Thanks for the reviews! I'm trying to not make it too confusing for the reader, at the same time as I kind of do want to portray how confused the metacrisis is at the moment. He will get a name, eventually, but for now neither he nor the Doctor is completely sure of if he is "the Doctor" or not, and what else he could possibly be. All in good time._

_If I skip events from the show, you can imagine them happening similarly enough to how they went down in canon. I'm focusing on what's different, with the Doctor being in a state of rage and sorrow now as opposed to in "Waters of Mars" where he was rather gleeful in the beginning, and the duplicate (with his human viewpoints and feelings) being the one to experience "Planet of the Dead" rather than a full Time Lord._

* * *

**Chapter 6 – The Red Planets I**

For two days, the metacrisis didn't see the Doctor. The Time Lord was hiding away in the endless corridors and rooms of the TARDIS, while the ship was just floating randomly through space and time. It seemed like the TARDIS herself was keen on not letting the metacrisis find him, because sometimes the metacrisis could spot a pair of chucks or a flash of brown turning around a corner in front of him, just to discover that the TARDIS had rerouted him back to the console room when he reached that same corner. A console room without the Doctor.

Over these two days, the metacrisis fought many inner battles with himself. He went from leaving the Doctor alone on purpose, to searching for him for hours at end in the TARDIS. He went from pitying the Doctor, to feeling sad about himself. From thinking that he shouldn't exist at all, to thinking that he couldn't really be anything other than the Doctor himself – a second Doctor, simply. He had the Doctor's body and better part of his mind.

Of course he was sad about Rose Tyler. How could he possibly not be? She had been his light, the one to save him from the darkness his Ninth regeneration had been coursing through. But whenever he thought of her, even in as little as two days after the terrible event on Bad Wolf Bay, the metacrisis couldn't help smiling at first. She was so sweet, and she had found her way back to him. It was as if he had to remind himself of the fact that she was gone. Not just alive and away in another universe. Gone, from all universes forever. It felt too surreal for him to grasp. How could she be gone? He felt like he could still feel her. If she suddenly came scuttling through a corridor in the TARDIS when he was going around looking for the Time Lord Doctor, he wouldn't be surprised. He would laugh and take her hand and ask her to aid him in his search.

He had been the one to allow it, but it was very difficult to recall the intense moments when they had connected on the beach. When he felt her skin against his hands for the last time and forced her mind open. His head still hurt when he thought about it, and he knew that he had to talk to the other Doctor about it eventually. The Doctor needed to know why she had died.

But if the Time Lord Doctor was going to hide away in the TARDIS forever, maybe right now it was the metacrisis' role to head out into the universe and act like the Doctor should.

It was when he had reached this point in his thoughts that the metacrisis landed the TARDIS in London, somewhere close to Donna's time. Adamant on acting before he changed his whirling mind again, he grabbed the brown overcoat and the sonic screwdriver and headed out for the first time in days.

The sunset was clearly visible on the for once clear sky above London, and the air was thick with the smell of petrol, perfume and chips. The metacrisis felt strangely at home. He had always enjoyed visiting London around this time in history, after all. Some of his best memories were from here. Some of his best companions.

Yeah, he couldn't really call himself anything other than the Doctor now. Who knew if the full Time Lord would ever emerge from the depths of the TARDIS again? No, metacrisis or not, the person who was standing on the streets of London now, in front of the blue police box, wearing a blue suit, dark red chucks and a light brown coat, was definitely the Doctor.

Content with that conclusion, this Doctor strolled away, intent on finding something interesting to dive into. A problem, a mystery. A robbery, a dropped ice-cream. Anything!

What he found was something mysterious alright. After having bought himself a chocolate bunny – seems he had managed to land right in the Easter holidays – he started fiddling with the sonic screwdriver to find the setting that could freeze the chocolate. Cold chocolate was good chocolate. His face wrinkled though, when he instead picked up a strange signal. A very strange signal.

Almost forgetting about the bunny in his other hand, the Doctor started running down the street in the direction the signal came from. Seems like it was intensifying, and yet the Doctor only slowly got more readings on what it could be. A disturbance. A spatial one! Dimensional? A crack in the universe? That didn't seem right; they had just closed off all the parallel worlds some days ago on his own timeline. A thrill came over him, somehow simultaneously unpleasant and very exciting, and he almost absent-mindedly jumped into a bus that was going in the right direction, right before it took off. The psychic paper made for a good bus ticket.

He was the Doctor and he was adventuring, after all. Just as it should be. He pushed away a fleeting thought of a brown suit ghosting the corridors of the TARDIS, and flopped himself down beside a random young woman who looked rather flustered already before the Doctor arrived.

"Hello!" he said, deciding to try and make her feel at least almost as good as he felt right now, by instantly offering her non-frozen chocolate bunny with a wink. "Happy Easter!"

The girl just stared at him as if she didn't understand what he was. Before anything more could be said though, the sonic screwdriver began to bleep.

"Oh! Hold this please," the Doctor said and shoved the bunny at her to use both hands on his instrument. It kept bleeping. "Hm, it doesn't do this very often. Mostly there's just this, um, whirring."

The girl held the bunny closer, still staring very suspiciously at him. As did several other people on the bus, actually, at the way the Doctor was waving about the silvery stick and its blue light.

"I'm picking up… Something very strange."

"I know the feeling," the woman beside him finally muttered. She glanced out the window, as if she was looking out for something. Just then, they entered a tunnel though, blocking her view.

The Doctor suddenly stood up, pointing the screwdriver forward. "These particles… Not what I thought I'd find, but… This thing detects them," he added over his shoulder to the girl with the chocolate bunny.

"Right now, just a way out from here would be handy," she said, seemingly with increasing annoyance. "Could you detect me one of those?"

So she was running from something, the Doctor thought and put that down on a mental note before he took a few steps forward, the bleeping of the screwdriver increasing.

"Excuse me," a blond woman in a seat at the front said in a bothered tone. "Do you mind?"

"Sorry, it's my screwdriver," the Doctor said with a deepening frown.

"Can't you turn that thing off?" the first girl cried.

The Doctor did shut the bleeping noise off. But his terrified face as he turned back to her didn't calm her down.

"Um, what was your name?" he asked hurriedly.

The girl's eyes narrowed for a moment before she put on a cocky smile and replied: "Christina."

"Christina, hold on tight," the Doctor said and quickly sat down beside her again. "Everybody, hold on!"

One blinding crash later, the passengers on the bus stepped out into something that was clearly not any form of London at night. The sky was bright, the air was hot… And the wheels of the bus were firmly parked in the sands of a vast, red desert.

"Call it a hunch…" the Doctor commented after they had been standing speechless in the sand for a moment. "But I think we've gone a little further than Brixton. Brixton, friction, fiction."

.

Inside the TARDIS, a Time Lord finally entered the console room for the first time in days. He was surprised to find it empty. Somehow, he had been sure that he would find his mirror self here. But, he supposed, if he had been hiding away and not wanting to face the world for a while, maybe his other self had too. His newborn, bloodthirsty, reckless other self. The Doctor had had lots of time to blame him over the last few days.

He knew that the half Time Lord had been searching for him though. Sometimes he had heard his footsteps behind him in the corridors, but they had never caught up. It wasn't a too far fetched guess that the TARDIS had been protecting him. She probably knew that he really needed his space now. Distance. At least he really didn't need to stare into a face identical to his own.

A quick glance on the instruments showed that there was only one Doctor onboard the ship. The metacrisis must have left.

For a few vibrant seconds, the Doctor considered just taking off. Right there and then, away from his duplicate and the horrors he stood for. Genocide, letting Rose Tyler die… The grief he had been working on burying deep within the TARDIS surfaced again.

But he couldn't just leave his part-human self here, could he? They were on Earth, he concluded after a quick look out the doors. Although, if there was any time and place he _could_ leave him without feeling too evil, it would be Donna's Earth. It wasn't as if the duplicate wouldn't be able to survive there if the Doctor never came back for him. He was half human, for crying out loud. Fit right in. Besides, the Doctor was the one who was still here, in plain sight in the TARDIS. It was the metacrisis who had left! It had been _his_ choice. Well then.

The anger took over again and before any dangerous thoughts of reason returned to the broken Time Lord, he made the TARDIS dematerialize from Earth, fly through the vortex away from Donna's time, into the future somewhere…

Where would he go? Some place quiet, but amazing. He needed something, some place, to take his mind off things. Well, he _did_ know a place, not too far away even. What era he landed in wouldn't matter much. Therefore, without setting the date very accurately, the Doctor put in the coordinates for the fourth planet from the sun, and went to fetch his old space suit. Regardless of date, there was not much air to breathe on the red planet.

.

As the humans poured out from the bus and stared in marvel or terror at the three suns above them or the vast, endless sea of red sand that surrounded them, the part human Doctor merely walked away a bit, lost in his own thoughts.

"Ready for every emergency," a voice came from his side.

Christina had picked up a pair of sunglasses from her backpack and put them on. Her dark pink lips smiled and her black hair, matching her dark outfit, flew like a flag beside her head in the sandy wind.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. She clearly thought she was clever. Well, this Doctor wouldn't have a woman marching in, spreading sass all over the place without letting him get a say in. He nonchalantly pulled his own glasses off, whirred his blue screwdriver at them for a few seconds and then put them back on with a smile towards the girl.

"Every one of them," he said.

The girl looked more amused than surprised. "So, what's your name?"

"Um… I'm the Doctor," he replied, starting to look more closely at some sand in his hand.

"Name, not rank."

"The Doctor."

"Is that a name?"

"The Doctor, yes."

"You're called 'the Doctor'?"

"Yes, I am."

"That's not a name…" Christina scoffed. "That's a psychological condition."

"Hold on," the black male suddenly said, walking up to them with a finger pointed accusingly at the Doctor. "You had that thing, that machine! Did you make this happen?"

The Doctor first just stared at him. Despite being nearly half-human these days, he still couldn't understand why other humans always had to accuse him as soon as strange things happened. He didn't even look very weird, did he? He held up his hands innocently.

"Look, if you must know, I was tracking a hole in the fabric of reality. A sort of crack. Call it a hobby. But I thought it was a tiny little hole, no danger to anyone! Then it grows big… And we got drawn right through it."

The bus driver looked around. "But where is it then? There's nothing here, there's just sand."

The Doctor sighed. "Alright. You want proof?" He walked to the other side of the bus, the passengers following him like intrigued sheep. "We drove, through this!"

He picked up a handful of sand and threw it up in the air. Something suddenly shimmered and wobbled about a meter in front of him, as if an invisible wall in the air was budging when touched.

Christina was astonished. "That's…"

"That's a magic door," the Doctor said seriously. Then he shook his head. "No, wait, I didn't want to use that term."

The driver suddenly walked past the Doctor before he could stop him. "So what you are saying is that on the other side of that is London? We can get home?"

The Doctor shook his head and followed him with his gaze. "The bus came through, but I don't think we can. Bags of flesh, not as durable as a cage of steel. Hey, I said we can't!"

But it was too late, the driver ran towards the magic door with a relieved grin on his face. As soon as he jumped through it though, his body caught a multicolored fire and he let out a scream that cut off as his throat literally vanished.

Meanwhile, or as meanwhile as many years into the future can be, the Time Lord Doctor reached the top of a red hill. His orange spacesuit blended in strangely nicely with the surroundings. As he took a few deep breaths after the climb, he looked down at the valley before him. Despite the emotionally turbulent state he was in, he couldn't help but cracking a smile when he realized in what time period he must have landed on Mars.

A fresh spacebase, complete with several huge domes and long corridors leading from a central hub to connect them. The spaceship stood ready to launch in the end of one of the tunnels. Or at least it didn't look shaggy or damaged. He must have reached the spacebase at the height of its life.

"Beautiful," he muttered to himself.

Just then, he felt something poke him in the back and almost jumped at the scare he got.

"Rotate. Slowly," a very robotic voice said.

He did as he was told and found indeed a robot looking back at him, gun pointed at him with a mechanical hand.

"You are under arrest," it said. "For trespassing. Gadget, gadget."

The Doctor blinked. "Gadget?"


End file.
